"On the question of pronunciation, there is something to be said
which I think in ordinary teaching is not sufficiently considered.
Pronunciation should be simple and unaffected, but not always
fashioned rigidly according to a dictionary standard. No less an
authority than Cicero points out that pronunciation must vary
widely according to the emotions to be expressed; that it may be
broken or cut with a varying or direct sound, and that it serves
for the actor the purpose of color to the painter, from which to
draw variations. Take the simplest illustration. The formal
pronunciation of A-h is 'Ah,' of O-h, 'Oh,' but you cannot
stereotype the expression of emotion like this. These exclamations
are words of one syllable, but the speaker who is sounding the
gamut of human feeling will not be restricted in his pronunciation
by dictionary rule. It is said of Edmund Kean that he never spoke
such ejaculations, but always sighed or groaned them. Fancy an
actor saying:
'My Desdemona! Oh! oh! oh!'
"Words are intended to express feelings and ideas, not to bind them
in rigid fetters; the accents of pleasure are different from the
accents of pain, and if a feeling is more accurately expressed as
in nature by a variation of sound not provided by the laws of
pronunciation, then such imperfect laws must be disregarded and
nature vindicated!"
It was of the address in which these words occur that a Boston hearer
said that it was felt by every one present that "the truth had been
spoken by a man who had learned it through living and not through
theory.
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